Phil Lord and Chris Miller Break Silence on Their Firing From ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’

Getting fired from the Han Solo spinoff wasn’t the first time Phil Lord and Chris Miller experienced creative heartbreak. Over the weekend, the filmmaking duo appeared at the Vulture Festival for a panel dedicated to their tragically short-lived series Clone High. During the Q&A, talk inevitably turned to Lord and Miller’s other, more recent career hiccup, with the pair finally — and gracefully — breaking their silence on the departure from the Star Wars universe.

Lord and Miller have had plenty of time to reflect on their firing from Solo: A Star Wars Story, and looking back, they have quite a bit of affection for the cast and crew — and even the production experience as a whole. The duo were let go from the spinoff project when their filmmaking style (which involves a lot of improv both in front of and behind the camera) and story ideas clashed with Lucasfilm’s vision for the young Han Solo film. Ron Howard was brought in to complete production on Solo, which hits theaters next May.

Despite the highly-publicized firing and the rumors surrounding it, Lord and Miller appear to have found plenty of positives in the experience. Says Lord:

The experience of shooting the movie was wonderful. We had the most incredible cast and crew and collaborators. I think in terms of us leaving the project, I think everybody went in with really good intentions and our approach to making the movie was different than theirs. That was a really big gap to bridge, and it proved to be too big. Sometimes people break up, and it’s really sad, and it’s really disappointing, but it happens and we learned a lot from our collaborators and we’re better filmmakers for it. We’re really proud of the work we did on the movie and we wish everybody the best.

Miller followed up by reminding attendees that they have two other exciting projects on the horizon — Sony’s animated Spider-Man movie (which features Miles Morales) and The LEGO Movie sequel:

We’re super well-adjusted, obviously we’re doing great. We’re super drunk right now. As Phil said, we had such a great relationship with cast and crew, we were really rooting for them. After we took a much-needed vacation, we got back into it and now we’re writing and producing a sequel to The Lego Movie and producing a Miles Morales animated Spider-Man.

According to some reports, Howard was able to use quite a bit of Lord and Miller’s work on Solo, but the finished product probably won’t feel anything like the duo’s usual stuff.